British geographer and military historian, Sir Halford MacKinder, in 1904, wrote an article that changed how politicians and military men viewed the world. It was a perception that influenced Hitler to send his troops eastward in an attack upon Russia in 1940. It was also the driving force that led to the underpinnings for superpower foreign policy which guided foreign policy for both sides during the Cold War. The theory that had so influenced nearly three generations of strategists, was simply called the Heartland Theory. Basically, Mackinder’s Heartland Theory viewed geo-political military history as a struggle between land-based and sea-based powers. Mackinder believed the world had become a “closed” system, with virtually no new lands left for the Europeans powers to discover, to conquer, and to fight over without creating chaos elsewhere. According to the theory the common denominator for world conflict has been reduced to sea powers vs. land-based powers which would subsequently struggle for dominance of the world, and the ultimate victor would be in a position to set up a world empire. The determining factor in this struggle was physical geography; “Man and not nature initiates, but nature in large measure controls”
Posted on: Sun, 01 Sep 2013 01:11:12 +0000
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